Verjus Spritz
Verjus, alcohol-free sparkling wine and soda over ice — a dry, wine-like spritz with no bitter aperitif and no juice.
- Difficulty
- easy
- Prep time
- 2 min
- Strength
- Alcohol-free
- Glassware
- Wine glass
- Base
- alcohol free
- Serves
- 1
Related drinks
One thing worth checking on the label
This recipe is built on a product that is not always completely alcohol-free. For most people that makes no difference; if you are avoiding alcohol entirely, it is worth reading the bottle rather than the category name.
- Alcohol-free sparkling wine, dry — De-alcoholised wines are made by removing alcohol from finished wine rather than by never having any, and the removal is rarely total.
Soda water and tonic water contain no alcohol at all, so where it matters they are always a safe substitution — see the swaps above for what that does to the drink.
More on alcohol-free products and what varies between them →Ingredients
- Verjus blanc40ml
- Alcohol-free sparkling wine, dry100ml
- Soda water50ml
Garnish: Green grapes, halved, Lemon peel
Method
- Fill a wine glass with ice.
- Add the verjus.
- Pour in the alcohol-free sparkling wine, then the soda, both straight from the fridge.
- Lift once with a bar spoon and garnish with halved green grapes and a strip of lemon peel.
Your version
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Equipment
Don't have everything? Here's what works instead.
Bar spoon
Household swap: A long teaspoon, or skip stirring altogether.
Glass and ice
Standard cubes, filled to the top
A long drink with a fizzy top wants the glass filled to the top with cubes: more ice keeps it colder, and a cold mixer holds its bubbles.
Crushed ice would dilute it much faster and flatten any fizz.
About 190ml poured over the ice
The recipe's wine glass is typically 350–650ml.
Also holds it: rocks glass, margarita glass, julep cup.
Needs a glass of about 317–380ml brimful.
How this is worked out
- A drink with no ice needs a little of the glass left empty — about a tenth — so it can be carried without spilling and has room for aroma.
- Filled to the top with cubes or packed crushed ice, roughly half to three-fifths of a glass is left for the drink.
- A drink built in the glass dilutes from the ice already there, so its melt water is not added on top.
- One large cube takes up roughly 65–125ml, from a sphere to a 5cm cube.
- Glass capacities are brimful and vary by maker — your own glass, measured with water, is the figure to trust.
Missing an ingredient?
Each swap below says what it changes and how to correct for it, so you can decide whether you are making this drink or a neighbouring one.
Instead of Verjus
Best substitute: Lemon Juice
This is the sour element in this drink.
Quantity: Use 15ml lemon juice and 10ml simple syrup
Flavour impact: Becomes a lemon spritz: brighter and more citrus, less like wine.
What changes
Expect less sweetness, more acidity, more bitterness and more intensity. Still a good drink, and a slightly different one.
- Sweetness ↓
- Less sweetness leaves the acid and the spirit more exposed, so the drink will taste sharper and drier than it should.
- Acidity ↑
- More acidity makes the drink taste fresher and drier, and can push a balanced sour over into sharp.
- Bitterness ↑
- Bitterness builds across a drink rather than announcing itself, so this will read as a longer, drier finish.
- Intensity ↑
- A more intensely flavoured ingredient will start to dominate the components around it.
- Character
- Both are tart and clean, and you lose vinous and green grape, and you gain bright and citrusy. Numbers can't see this: two ingredients can be identically sour and still smell nothing alike.
To correct for it
- Add a little more syrup, a small amount at a time, until the edges come back together.
- Use slightly less of it, or add a touch more sweetener to hold the balance.
- Pour slightly less, or lengthen the drink a little, and let the sweetness catch up.
- Scale it back by a third and let the other ingredients hold their share.
Moderate confidenceShifts the drinkBecomes a variation
Want to change something these swaps do not cover — too sweet, too thin, a herb you dislike? How to adjust any mocktail works by what each component does rather than by ingredient name.
Make it better
- Choose the driest alcohol-free sparkling wine you can find. Many are sweet, and sweetness is what this drink is meant to avoid.
- Pour the verjus first so the fizz does the mixing; stirring knocks the bubbles out.
- For a party, keep the verjus, wine and soda all in the fridge and build each glass to order — none of it can be batched with the fizz in.
- Add the carbonated mixer last, after shaking or stirring the rest, and pour gently to keep as much fizz as possible.
- Express the citrus peel by pinching it, skin-side down, over the drink before dropping it in — this releases aromatic oils across the surface.
Rescue this drink
- Too sour
- Verjus varies in acidity. Start with 30ml and add to taste.
- Sweet and flat
- The sparkling wine is a sweet style or was open too long. Use a fresh, dry bottle.
- Goes flat quickly
- Warm soda or wine, or too much stirring. Everything cold, and lift once.
- Served too warmgeneral guidance
- Chill the glass, ice and every ingredient ahead of time — a warm pour is the fastest way to lose a cold drink's balance. For one serving, there's no real fix beyond rebuilding it properly chilled; for a batch, keep everything refrigerated until the moment of serving and add ice last.
Make ahead & storage
Batch the base, finish at serving
Batch the base days ahead and add alcohol-free sparkling wine, dry and soda water when you pour.
- Alcohol-free sparkling wine, dry:
- Carbonated — it goes flat in a bottle, and there is no way to put the fizz back.
- Soda water:
- Carbonated — it goes flat in a bottle, and there is no way to put the fizz back.
What it tastes like
The taste, and what drives it
dry, sharp, very light, sparkling — a long and lengthened drink served long, over ice.
Dry
Dry → Sweet
Barely sweetened. The spirit and the acid are what you taste.
What drives it: Alcohol-free sparkling wine, dry — carries the most sugar into the glass.
Sharp
Soft → Sharp
Properly sharp. This is the axis the drink is built on.
What drives it: Verjus blanc — supplies the acidity. Worked out partly from ingredient category rather than from recorded detail.
Very light
Light → Rich
Almost weightless in the mouth — closer to a long soft drink than to a sipper.
What drives it: Alcohol-free sparkling wine, dry — adds most of the weight.
Very sparkling
Still → Sparkling
Carbonated, which lifts the aromatics and makes the drink taste drier than its sugar content alone would suggest.
What drives it: Alcohol-free sparkling wine, dry — carries the carbonation.
Very delicate
Delicate → Bold
Very gentle — easy to drink and easy to lose behind food.
No single ingredient accounts for this — it comes from the combination rather than from one bottle.
What you smell first
- Citrus peelLeadsBefore the first sip
From Lemon peel
- Orchard fruit
From Alcohol-free sparkling wine, dry
Aromas marked as sitting above the drink reach you before the first sip — skipping that garnish changes the drink more than its size suggests.
How it was worked out
Each reading comes from the recipe's own recorded taste scores combined with what each ingredient contributes, weighted by how much of it is in the glass. About 79% of this drink by volume has detailed ingredient data behind it; the rest falls back to broader category rules.
How balance actually works →If it isn't right
What goes wrong with this drink, and why
Only the faults this particular recipe is actually prone to — open one for the likely cause, the adjustment, and what the adjustment costs you.
The fizz is the last thing in, and the first thing lost
Worth knowingCarbonation escapes to warmth, agitation and anything it can cling to — pulp, sugar crystals, a dry glass wall.
How to handle it: Chill the mixer hard, pour it against the inside of the glass, add it last, and stir once at most.
It's too sour
- Likely cause
- Verjus blanc varies more than any other ingredient in the drink. Limes differ by weeks of ripeness, and a sharp one can be half again as acidic as a mild one at the same measure.
- What to change
- Add sweetener a few millilitres at a time rather than diluting — you are correcting a ratio, not a concentration.
- What that does
- Sourness recedes and the drink gains a little weight.
- The trade-off
- Overshoot and you will be reading the too-sweet entry instead. Small additions, tasting between each, are slower but cheaper than a rebuild.
It tastes weak
- Likely cause
- With no alcohol to carry flavour and no heat to cut through, an alcohol-free drink has to work harder for the same presence — thinness here is almost never a measuring error.
- What to change
- Add acidity or bitterness rather than more fruit. Sweetness is what is usually already too high in a thin mocktail.
- What that does
- The drink gains definition without gaining sugar.
- The trade-off
- It will also read as slightly sharper, which is what 'more presence' usually means in practice — not everyone wants that.
It's gone flat
- Likely cause
- Alcohol-free sparkling wine, dry loses gas to warmth, to agitation and to anything it can nucleate against — pulp, sugar crystals, a dry glass.
- What to change
- Chill the mixer properly, add it last, pour it against the inside wall of the glass, and stir once at most.
- What that does
- The bubbles last, which also makes the drink taste drier — carbonation contributes a real acidity of its own on top of the lift.
- The trade-off
- A single gentle stir mixes less thoroughly, so the first sip can be stronger than the last. Lift from the bottom rather than stirring round.
It doesn't smell of anything
- Likely cause
- The aroma you are missing is probably citrus peel, which sits above the drink rather than in it — skipping or under-expressing the garnish removes it entirely.
- What to change
- Express the peel over the surface with the skin facing the drink, then drop it in. Herbs go in the glass, not on the side.
- What that does
- Aroma arrives before flavour does, so the whole drink reads as more intense without a single measure changing.
- The trade-off
- The oil does land in the drink, though — an over-expressed peel adds a faint bitterness to the first mouthful.
It tastes one-dimensional
- Likely cause
- With 3 components there is nowhere for complexity to hide — a drink this simple is exposed by design, so a dull one is usually a dull ingredient rather than a missing step.
- What to change
- Change the quality of what is there before adding anything new: a better base bottle, a dash of bitters. Bitters add layers at a scale nothing else matches.
- What that does
- More going on at the same strength and sweetness.
- The trade-off
- Adding a whole extra ingredient instead usually produces a muddier drink rather than a deeper one — and a better bottle costs more.
The garnish is all I can taste
- Likely cause
- The lemon peel sits right under your nose, so it arrives before the drink does. Expressed peel oil is intense, and a peel left in keeps releasing it.
- What to change
- Express the peel over the drink, then discard it rather than dropping it in.
- What that does
- The garnish frames the drink rather than replacing it.
- The trade-off
- Too little and the drink loses its first impression — the garnish is doing a real aromatic job here, so ease off rather than leave it out.
It foams over when I top it up
- Likely cause
- Alcohol-free sparkling wine, dry releases its gas wherever it finds somewhere to form bubbles — the rough surface of ice, sugar, fruit pulp or a dry glass — and it does so fastest when it is warm or poured fast.
- What to change
- Chill alcohol-free sparkling wine, dry well, tilt the glass, and pour slowly down the side or down a barspoon. Top in two goes, letting the first settle.
- What that does
- A full glass with the bubbles still in the drink rather than on the bar.
- The trade-off
- A slower pour takes a few seconds longer per drink, which adds up over a round.
The ice melts too quickly
- Likely cause
- Small cubes, cubes straight from a freezer door, or a glass that started warm all melt faster. A glass only half full of ice also melts faster than a full one, because each cube does more of the cooling.
- What to change
- Fill the glass to the top with cold, dry ice, or use one large cube in a short glass. Chill the glass first if you can.
- What that does
- The drink stays at its best for longer before the last third goes thin.
- The trade-off
- More ice in the glass means a little less drink fits, and a large cube chills more slowly at first.
Something else wrong? Open this drink in the Recipe Doctor.
Taste profile
- Sweetness
- 1/5
- Sourness
- 3/5
- Bitterness
- 0/5
- Strength
- 0/5
- Fruitiness
- 2/5
- Freshness
- 5/5
- Creaminess
- 0/5
- Smokiness
- 0/5
Nutrition & alcohol
Estimate only- Calories
- 45 kcal
- Sugar
- 9 g
- Carbohydrates
- 10 g
- Alcohol units (UK)
- 0
- US standard drinks
- 0
- ABV
- 0%
- Serving size
- 190 ml
Show calculation assumptions
Source: Calculated from standard measures
Calorie breakdown: ~0 kcal from alcohol, ~45 kcal from sugar and mixers.
Likely range: 34–56 kcal, reflecting the confidence level above — not a lab-measured figure.
Assumes a dry alcohol-free sparkling wine of about 4g sugar per 100ml and unsweetened verjus.
These figures are estimates, not laboratory measurements — individual tolerance to alcohol varies. See our responsible drinking guidance.
Variations
Verjus and soda
Leave out the sparkling wine and use 150ml soda: drier, lighter and sharper.
What kind of drink this is
The structure behind the recipe
A built build: a long and lengthened alcohol-free drink, served long, over ice — sparkling in the mouth.
Long and lengthened
A short measure stretched with a mixer or juice — the drink's length, not its concentration, is the point of it.
Base
Alcohol-free sparkling wine, dry
Sour element
Verjus blanc
Lengthener
Soda water
Drinks built this way are collected as the Spritz family.
Technique
built
Components are poured into the serving glass over ice and stirred once, or not at all. Dilution happens while you drink rather than before.
The drink changes as you go: strongest at the first sip, longest and most diluted at the last. That drift is a feature of a long drink and a fault in a short one.
What it ruins: Nothing, but it cannot properly combine anything viscous — a syrup poured last will sit at the bottom.
Everything about building in the glass →How the technique works →Dilution
In the glass, as you drink
Water from ice typically makes up around 15% of the finished drink for a built build (commonly 10–20%). Dilution is an ingredient here, not a side effect.
Why dilution is an ingredient →Served
Long, over ice
Wine glass · 190ml
Served on ice, so it keeps chilling in the glass. A larger, colder, slower drink than the same spirits served straight up.
Texture and aroma
Carbonation lifts aromatics and adds a slight acidity of its own, which is why a long drink can taste drier than its sugar content suggests.
Aroma arrives before flavour does. A citrus twist is expressed over the surface so its oils sit on top of the drink — skipping it changes the drink more than its size suggests.
Where to go from here
Each of these is here because of something specific about this drink, not as a standard set of links.
Drinking this with food: seafood, oysters and anything raw
On its recorded taste scores this drink meets the test for seafood, oysters and anything raw — the page explains the principle behind it rather than simply asserting the pairing.
Making alcohol-free drinks that stand up
Alcohol does structural work in a drink, and this one has to do those jobs another way. The alcohol-free path works through how.
Where it comes from
Origin and family
Origin of the Verjus Spritz
A CocktailHQ recipe on the spritz structure, not a historical drink. Verjus is a long-established culinary ingredient; using it as the acid in alcohol-free drinks is a contemporary bar practice.
Family
Spritz3 parts sparkling wine · 2 parts bitter aperitif · 1 part soda — built over ice, in a big glass.
Why this works without alcohol
The principles behind this drink, explained properly rather than as a list of substitutions.
Try this next
- Lime RickeyLime Rickey
You may like this because it shares a refreshing taste profile with the Verjus Spritz.
Alcohol-Free MargaritaYou may like this because it shares a sour taste profile with the Verjus Spritz.
Alcohol-Free CosmopolitanYou may like this because it shares a sour taste profile with the Verjus Spritz.
Questions people ask
- What is verjus?
- The pressed juice of unripe wine grapes, unfermented and so alcohol-free. It is sharp like citrus but tastes of grape and wine rather than of lemon, which is why this spritz uses it.
- Can I make Verjus Spritzes ahead for a party?
- Only the chilling, as the tips above say. Keep the verjus, sparkling wine and soda in the fridge and build each glass to order; the fizz does not survive batching.
Use up your ingredients
Bought a bottle just for this? Here's what else it's good for.
Related tools
Scale this for a party
Work out bottles, mixers, ice and total alcohol units for any number of guests.
How far a bottle goes
Drinks per bottle, which bottle runs out first, batching — and the cost, at your own prices.
Recipe confidence
Three ingredients and a simple build; acidity and sweetness depend on the verjus and wine used.